Hello All,
Bit of an update for you. If you prefer the TLDR: The SQ version of Surround Master won't ship out before Sunday as we'd hoped, but we reached a milestone that was eluding us and we're now fine-tuning. We don't want to send this out half baked.
Now the long version:
Firstly, the bad news. It doesn't look like we'll be shipping the SQ version of the Surround Master before the end of Q2 2013. Mostly on account of Q3 starting after this weekend, and I did actually schedule some sleep for this week. No really, I've lost sleep trying to get my head around some of SQ. Also stared long and hard at the walls of my shower in the morning thinking about 45 degree phase shifts - make of that what you will, my housemates don't seem too impressed with my shower-times though, and they couldn't care less about 45-degree anythings.
Now the good news. We're almost there. What I ended up creating this week as a result of applying and testing a stupid number of different methods, is amazingly clear separation, but the downside is - having spent so much time on the SQ part of the system, I got too focused in trying to make actual SQ sound amazing which, unfortunately thanks to the nature of the beast, is a lost cause. I take responsibility for that - I didn't get Charlie involved in the foundation part of the creation because he's had so many things to do the last few months (We call him "Miscellaneous Man" at the moment) - and being so spoiled by how good our Involve decode works, I was expecting to be able to make it better than it's capable of. So when I got Charlie involved late this week he surprised me by saying it sounded how he expected at this point, and that the second part of the integration would help solve a lot of the issues. Sigh. I should have asked him sooner.
What can I say? Mea Culpa. So what we ended up with is something that sounded as good as it would have sounded back then, and all the problems that entails.
Needless to say, I'm not a huge fan of SQ. But Charlie and I, having reached the pits of despair and waded through the murky depths, spent the last few days of this week getting it to a workable point, and then patched it in with the Involve part of the equation (I know I know, it sounds like our "eleven herbs and spices" - I apologize for the very "marketing" sound of that.)
The result which I got to hear today (Friday) just before the day ended, was much better. What I believe we have is the ground level of our system, which is good enough to listen to and poke at. From here we'll start tightening up the numbers in various points, and seeing just how far we can push it before it gives in to the limitations of the mathematics. But at least there is light at the end of the tunnel now, and it's not an oncoming train.
We'll probably start comparing it with RustyandI's equipment next week or thereabouts, considering he's just up the road, relatively speaking.
Oh, and TOTALLY off topic, last week I visited the Astor theater here in Melbourne (The last bastion of old Art Deco theater houses, and the only ones with equipment capable of playing anything from mono to four track magnetic to fully digital 4K), and watched the Blues Brothers - they unearthed a rare print from 1984, with a few scratches but mostly intact, on good quality film with low colour degradation, and most importantly 4-track magnetic sound - very rare for this film, most prints were single track at best. It's one of the richest sound experiences I've heard in a cinema in a long time. And the movie still holds up wonderfully.
I'll update a bit more frequently next week as we make progress.
~David
